Gun ban won't end evil

There’s been a lot of talk in recent weeks about gun laws and their impact on the tragedy in Connecticut, but there’s one thing that can never be legislated.

Evil.No one can make a law that prevents bad people from wanting to do bad things. No one can make a law that can force someone to respect life.

No legislative body can sit in a room and sign a piece of paper that makes a madman stop himself from taking the lives of innocent children.

This isn’t to say guns are good for society – far from it. But they’re here, and people have them.

That includes good people and bad people.

Ban them all, some people cryout. A world without guns would save us all from these tragedies, or so we hear.

But new gun laws won’t solve it all. It won’t make the world that much safer. If anything, the criminals would benefit.

It is worth pointing out that these crimes were perpetrated by someone who got someone else’s guns. He did not buy them legally himself, so any suggestion that a law preventing so-called “mentally ill” people from obtaining guns would make much difference is faulty.

People who want guns will find a way to get guns, no matter what. We certainly shouldn’t make it easier – things like eliminating “gun shows” and adding the terrorist watch list to the background check can help – but there are few ways to truly control them.

If guns were made next to impossible for the average person to get a hold of, criminals would be able to create a new black market. We didn’t learn anything from prohibition, and we haven’t learned much from the war on drugs.

In case anyone hasn’t noticed, despite the illegality of most drugs, we are losing that war, too.

And do we want a world where only the criminals and the military have guns?

There is no panacea solution to this problem. We can pass stricter gun laws and maybe sleep better at night for a while, but it won’t change what’s happening to this country – and to this world, really.

In a story that went virtually unnoticed by many Americans, a man in China stabbed 22 kids in a school the same day as the Connecticut shooting. None of the attacks were fatal.

On one side of the gun control debate, you could use this to argue that guns killed, and the knife didn’t. On the other side, you could say that this maniac didn’t need a gun to harm children, and that the fact that none died was fantastic good fortune.

But both sides must admit one thing. This world has changed forever. Forget about guns, or knives, or box cutters or planes. There has been a cultural shift at the most fundamental level in the way people treat each other, communicate and perceive each other.

Despite landmarks of what we call progress, we’ve done little to make the world safer for humankind.

As long as there is hate, anger and godless cruelty in the world, these heinous acts cannot truly be stopped. Gun laws can be debated until both sides are blue in the face, just as long as we realize that they’re not going to solve all this world’s ills.